Activity Two: Noting the Crime Scene
Chapter Two describes what happens at the Gingrich home when the detectives and coroners go in to analyze the crime scene. This is a perfect opportunity to capitalize on students' interest in forensic science television programs and get them to practice their powers of observation and note-taking skills. They will use a form of graphic organizer and then write an expository report. They will also be using oral communication skills.
I will set up five crime scenes in the media center and divide the students into groups of five. These crime scenes will consist of patches of carpet (donated by carpet stores) of about five feet by five feet. They will have a variety of normal, everyday articles on them, and a paper cut out representing a body. Articles that might be on the rug would be soda cans, small pieces of rope, pencils, pens, a t-shirt, a paper cup, a notebook, newspaper or magazine, a tube of hand cream, a hairbrush, etc. I will leave nothing that would be a weapon. Each patch would display different items, but all would have the body cut out.
Each group will receive a paper square representation graphic organizer to represent the "room." They will be instructed to draw the room with each item as it is on the carpet in relation to each other. I will ask them to use symbols to represent each item and to indicate on a legend what each symbol represents with a full physical description. I will show them the crime scene sketch at http://www.sccja.org/images/csr-crimescene8.jpg as an example. They will have twenty minutes to complete these graphic organizers, transforming the visual into words. They will then take the notes they have written and transfer these into a narrative report of what was located at the "crime scene." Each group will then have five minutes to make an oral report to the rest of the class about what they discovered.
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